Physical constraints and control of living systems.
Life runs far from thermodynamic equilibrium. With stochastic thermodynamics and the theory of nonequilibrium networks, we ask what physics permits and forbids in living systems, molecular or otherwise, and how they can be controlled.
Research
Thermodynamic constraints
How does nonequilibrium driving shape and limit what biochemical processes can do?
Response and control
How do living systems respond to change, and what are the general principles of their control?
Nonequilibrium anomalies
Which equilibrium intuitions fail when a system is driven, and what replaces them?
News
Thermodynamic Space of Chemical Reaction Networks, with Paolo De Los Rios and Daniel Maria Busiello, is published in Physical Review X 16, 041026. Explore its results in the interactive explainer.
Exact Finite Response of Higher-Order Statistics in Nonequilibrium Networks, with Ruicheng Bao, is published in Chinese Physics Letters 43, 100002.
Shiling Liang gives invited talks at Queen Mary University of London and Imperial College London under the title Turning the Knobs, on response and control in Markov jump processes and in biochemical processes.
How much can a single rate change a completion time? Two new preprints with Ruicheng Bao take up this question, with a universal control budget for first-passage kinetics and an exact response theory for mean first-passage times.
Non-equilibrium symmetry of cyclic first-passage times, with Daniel Maria Busiello and Simone Pigolotti, is published in New Journal of Physics 28, 064602.
Shiling Liang is selected for the Shanghai Magnolia Talent Program (Youth Project).
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